Beneath Juliette

By John Wilsterman

Beneath Juliette is a gripping tale of crime, obsession and one man's search for the truth. It is a story of personal courage against monumental obstacles and of lost love.
Twenty years ago an obscure policeman in a small rural town dies under mysterious circumstances. Today a modern television reporter, Brendan Macbean, locally famous for his quirky human interest stories becomes obsessed with rooting out the truth. He runs afoul of a rich and powerful family who will use their ruthless methods to keep their secrets buried.
On this sweeping stage of human passion, a murderous villain appears, who seems to hold all the strange secrets hidden for all these years, but who now sits on death row for seemingly unrelated crimes. Macbean must make a pact with this vicious criminal and must convince him to tell all he knows before lethal injection silences him forever.
Battling against subterfuge, intimidation and extreme violence, Macbean uncovers one shocking revelation after another in his relentless quest to bring the truth to light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Wilsterman
• Release date: Aug 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452490014

John Wilsterman

John Wilsterman finished a long career with IBM and turned his hand to writing the great Southern novel, not easy since he was born and raised as a Yankee. But his beloved adopted homeland has provided many interesting stories, characters and locations which he skillfully molded into the exciting crime thriller, Beneath Juliette. Quirky, funny and at times heartbreaking, from page one to the very end, this novel will pull you through more excitement, drama and plot twists than you thought you could stand.

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Chapter 1

Had I not gone fishing with Remy Robillard that night in October, the tale of Frank Robillard and TV Swanson might have remained buried beneath Juliette forever.

At the time Remy was my cameraman, someone I worked with at the television station. He was just a good old Georgia boy and quite a contrast to the rest of us star-power on-camera personalities. I’m really not much of a fisherman, especially at night, being prone to seasickness and easily spooked in the dark. But Remy’s a charismatic kind of guy so before caution and good sense squelched the whole thing I said sure, why not?

It was Friday night and neither of us had dates. Around midnight we sat in his boat in the middle of Lake Juliette. A full moon blazed in the sky over our heads. Our conversation was sparse but not our consumption of fishing fare: Budweiser, Vienna sausage, and Spanish peanuts. The moment was peaceful, the calm lake mirroring moon and clouds. The only signs of civilization were blinking red lights on the four turbine towers of a nearby power plant. Somewhere in the boat an old transistor radio murmured country music.

With a sharp lurch of the boat, Lake Juliette began emptying like the flushing of a giant commode.

What was that?

Nothing natural, Remy said.

Maybe I didn’t know much about fishing, but our boat shouldn’t jerk like that -- like it was rammed by a gator or a swamp thing. But gators don’t swim north of Macon, Georgia. And if a swamp thing existed or even the rumor of a swamp thing, I, Brendan Macbean, local television reporter of stories bizarre and folksy, would have put it on the News at Six a long time ago.

Tiny, expanding waves rippled the surface of the lake, twirling our boat slowly. A hundred yards away the shoreline seemed to revolve. What the hell? I expected Remy to explain it or shrug it off – but instead he grabbed his seat, hunkering down like he was going for a carnival ride.

"Hang on, Bren. This is going to be one bad ride! He spoke with a strong ZZ Top" inflection. Flashes of moonlight glinted off his teeth, but I couldn’t tell if he smiled or grimaced. I opened my mouth to say something, but a sudden, reckless twisting of the boat effectively choked me off. My fishing pole clattered to the bottom of the boat with the mono-filament line still hanging over the side.

Sudden acceleration flattened my lungs. A roar of rushing water grew in volume and blotted out all other sound, while the middle of the lake depressed into a shallow bowl. The onset of a tornado might have produced this much violence, but I saw only the clear night sky and moon overhead. The boat lunged against the anchor rope like a bad dog going for a walk. It parted and snapped toward me like a whip barely missing my face. Now free, the boat spun into the throat of a full-fledged whirlpool. Lake Juliette churned with fury, chugging up tree limbs and other junk, which we crashed into like floating bumper cars. Looking defiant, Remy rode the stern like a bull rider, glaring at the rising rampart of water.

I wedged my body deeper into the bow. The things in the boat -- the cooler, the radio, the minnow bucket -- flew around, pelting me with cruel jabs. I clung with slippery, weakening hands to whatever I could hold on to, but the centrifugal force slowly pulled me away, tearing at my grip, twisting me around. One of my legs slipped over the side, and I felt my shoe flick against a spinning wave.

Bren, No! Remy gripped my arm and yanked me back. My shoulder wrenched with pain. He flung my body to the bottom of the boat and flopped on me like a pro wrestler. We both rolled against each other, hugging like two manatees in a weird mating dance.

The force departed as quickly as it had come. Our bodies careened painfully against the sides of the boat. The lake’s surface subsided into choppy mounds of water. The sounds of the night returned - crickets and frogs. The moon came out from behind a cloud and cast a vivid light. I lay pinned under Remy’s body barely able to draw a breath. My nose caught his body odor and his dumpster fume breath. I felt his warmth, even though we were both soaked. After the threat of imminent death the ordinary nature of these things brought hot tears to my eyes, and with the strongest resolve I stifled the unmanly sobs rattling in my chest.

Remy stood, shifting as the boat rocked. He spat into the lake and returned to his seat at the stern. Except for being wet, he looked invigorated. He let out a huge breath, and his shaking hand conjured a pack of Marlboros, which by some miracle still held a dry one. A flash of his Bic brought it to life. I saw his chest expand followed by an exhale of smoke, a blossom of white in the moonlight. While staring at the distant shoreline he said, Shit. The smoke made the word sound throaty and harsh.

Trembling like a man in a seizure I lay on my back watching him. The moon behind Remy's head wreathed his face in shadows. With a sudden spasm, I sprang to the side of the boat and vomited the junk food I’d eaten only minutes before.

After a while, I splashed the cool black waters of Lake Juliette on my face.

Through a gravely throat burning with stomach acid I said, Maybe the fish will like that food better than I did. Uttering weak jokes at inappropriate moments seemed to be a trademark of mine.

There ain't any fish in Lake Juliette, Remy replied. The boat wobbled in lazy circles. The red lights of the power plant passed behind him. A slight smile elevated the cigarette hanging in the corner of his mouth.

What? Huh? I'm sure I said something similar.

What? Remy asked.

Adrenaline, asphyxiation and mortal terror make for an unstable mix. A grin struggled to unlock my face frozen for so long in a mask of terror. A laugh followed the grin. Remy nodded and laughed too. In seconds we were both laughing on the waters of Lake Juliette with no one around to call us crazy.

The night became quiet again, all thoughts of fishing forgotten. A lost Budweiser rolled against my foot. I reached for it and with a hiss and spew of foam yanked off the top. I took a long draught, the best I’d ever tasted. I blasted out a substantial belch and felt like a man again.

Well, I’ve been fucked, I said, sprawled in the bow of the boat, about a thousand times.

Yeah. Remy drew out the word.

At some unseen signal, we both stared at the middle of the lake. Just below the surface glowing green shapes appeared. Like the slow eruptions of a lava lamp, the shapes swirled with the remaining current forming an amorphous column emerging from the lake, a gaseous haze with shadows and features. Moonlight illuminated the shape. The hairs on the back of my head stood and goose bumps covered my arms. I swear it looked like a fuzzy hologram of an old woman in a nightgown. The green light faded into the night air, and after a few seconds, I wondered if it was ever there at all.

I pointed toward the middle of the lake. What… was that?

Like nothing could impress him Remy said, Swamp gas. The whirlpool sets it off. You know what it is. Phosphorescent methane or something.

It looked like an old lady coming up out of the lake.

Remy puffed his cigarette, looking who-knows-where in the dark. I heard folks say they sometimes see Miss Nora out here.

Miss Nora?

They say the old biddy haunts the lake. She lived here. He waved at the water. Her house was right down there. She was my dad's music teacher or something. Helped raised him. I don't know. Remy stopped for a second as if trying to recall more. It’s just swamp gas.

Your dad?

They say she killed him here... oh, about when I was ten.

"Killed him?"

"When the engineers built the lake they had to evict some folks. My dad was the policeman in Juliette, that little town over there. It was his job to make sure those folks all moved out.

The last one to go was this spooky old woman named Nora Potvin. All these small towns got one like her. Dad let her stay the longest, I guess because they’d had some kind of relationship. But Nora didn't want to go. She put a curse on him when he came to get her, ‘and all his scion,' which means me. Then she beaned him with a frying pan and sat in her rocker while the water came up and drowned them both. Anyway, that’s the story. According to the legend, she got him then and now she’s after me. If you read my fortune cookie, it says, ‘Beware of old ladies coming out of the lake.’ Ha! Remy’s laugh gently rocked the boat.

A tiny breeze wafted over the lake, and I shivered. Remy, this whirlpool thing could make a great story. We need to bring the camera out here. If we could get the swamp gas… My god, that’s amazing! Monday we can start hyping the spot, maybe show it Thursday just before we go to network.

I don’t want you to do a spot on the whirlpool.

Are you kidding? This is what we do.

Remy twisted around in his seat. Right here there used to be a pretty nice valley around a little old stream called Rum Creek. He flicked his cigarette butt into the lake and spat again. They dammed up the creek to build the lake and to get water for the power plant over there. He nodded to the flashing lights on the four towers.

There ain't enough water in the creek to fill up the lake in a hundred years, so they pumped it in from the Ocmulgee River. State natural resources people have tried to get fish to take here, but it's too warm for them. I think the plant heats up the water. There’s too much temperature change for the fish.

Thanks for the background, I said. If there's no fish, then why are we fishing?

Remy barked a short laugh. Bren, you ever had a ride like that?

I stared at him wishing we’d gone hunting instead.

Maybe I’m stupid, but drowning is not fishing.

Over by the plant they have a big holding pond for the water they use. Every now and then they let water back into the lake.

That causes the whirlpool?

He let the question hang for a moment and nodded. Maybe if they let out too much, but it’s rare. They release some water every day. The whirlpool might not happen again for months. Not too many people know about it, but I’m sure there’s engineers over there trying to figure it out. It's dangerous. They can't let boaters out here or there'd be a lot of accidents.

"You're damn right. We were an accident!"

So they don't let people on the lake after dark.

Except for us?

Remy grinned. Well, they don't allow us either.

Damnit! I'm breaking the law.

When I was a kid, my dad and I roamed these woods. His arm circled the lake. "We used to look for this cave. Dad’s uncle showed it to him when he was a boy. It was hard to find, but one day we sort of stumbled on it, just a long crack in the ground under a rock ledge. I remember trying to look inside. Dark… you couldn't see nothing. Cool air flowed out and it felt good ‘cause we were hot and sweaty. You could hear the sound of rushing water like when you hold a seashell to your ear. There must be a huge air chamber inside the cave. When the lake level gets high enough, a lot of water floods in, creating the whirlpool.

Can't they fix the cave? Close it up or something?

"Nobody knows where it is. Like I said, it was hard to find, even then. Now it's under fifty feet of water. They’ve been trying for years.

When Dad moved old Nora out, the whirlpool drowned both of them. By the time anybody looked, the water had come up. They brought in scuba divers and all.

What did they find?

There was nothing down there. No house. No old lady. Remy lit another Marlboro. It sputtered apparently not as dry as the first. They found his pickup all crunched up at the bottom of the lake near the dam. The doors were ripped off. He wasn't in it, but they found pieces of him all over. Brought us his bloody shirt, all tore up with his badge still pinned to it.

But what happened to the house? I said. Shouldn't it still be down there?

Remy nodded. I think the force of the water just swept it away and my dad and Miss Nora with it. They both drowned and the whirlpool sucked what was left of them into the cave. They never found a trace of Miss Nora. Neither hide, nor hair, nor a set of dentures. All that talk about hitting him with a frying pan was just talk. Nobody really knows what happened.

My mind swirled like the whirlpool. Why did you bring me here if not to do this story? I asked. You wanted to see if I could swim?

Can't be sure about the whirlpool. Doesn't happen regularly. I didn't bring you here for that, anyway. We just got lucky, I guess.

Lucky! I snorted. Like we got lucky and drowned.

Bren, the way folks in Juliette talked about my dad, you’d think he was a hero. I was ten years old. Mom and Grandpa don’t talk about him anymore. Nobody else does either. It’s like he never existed. I kept waiting for it to hit me, his dying and all, but I don’t think I ever grieved.

I had to interrupt him before I went bonkers. Remy, stop the soap opera. You want something. What is it?

He made another short laugh. Bren, maybe my dad was a hero. Now he’s gone. He died under mysterious circumstances in a small town in Georgia. Even without the whirlpool, it has all the earmarks of a Brendan Macbean ‘Georgia Legend.’

Remy wanted me to do a spot on his dad. He didn’t just invite me out here to scare the shit out of me. He wanted to get me hooked, if you’ll pardon the fishing pun, on a story about his dad.

I took a shaky breath. Why your dad and not the whirlpool, Remy? I’m sure he was a nice guy and all. That sounded a little cold, but sitting in a boat at night in wet clothes had ruined my social skills.

Bren, everybody in Atlanta likes your spots on the news. He then gave a passable impersonation of my close-out, "This is Brendan Macbean with another ‘Georgia Legend.'

Bren, I want you to do the piece on Dad. The whirlpool is just icing on the cake. I figured you could dig up the rest of the story. If my dad turned out to be a good guy, I'd feel better about it after all these years. A whole lot better.

I can't do a story just to make you feel better.

I noted the posture of his dark shape in the stern of the boat, leaning slightly toward me. Was there anything about his dad to bring in the whirlpool? I needed something to grab the viewers, to hold them through the commercials. I began to create the spot in my head. Start with a shot of the lake going into flush mode. Fake a granny in a nightgown swimming under water. Background narration: Is Lake Juliette the lake of death? Did the ghost of this woman murder a Georgia policeman? Exclusively on News at Six. Reporter Brendan Macbean uncovers the gruesome tale of the witch that killed the cop.

I shook my head.

Remy, do you think Bud’s going to buy this? My producer was a difficult man to please. He didn't really like my feel good, local weirdness stories. But they were popular, and I got more than my share of spots.

Remy chuckled. Bren, drop it if there’s no story. I won't feel bad. But I bet you'll find something interesting.

What was his name? I have to start somewhere.

Frank Robillard, football star, war hero, baseball coach, police officer. My dad.

A bolt of lightning hit me. A policeman in Juliette? Back in college I got a speeding ticket somewhere out here in the sticks. I was coming home from school. Could it have been him? I strained to remember.

Hmmm... let’s see. He told me the year.

Memory flooded back to me. I had been driving home from Georgia Southern. I-75 was one long traffic jam north of Macon. I was zooming down an alternate country highway. The radio blasting Statesboro Blues or something. Wind was whipping through the open window. Blue lights flashed in my mirror, but I hadn’t heard the siren for the music. A big guy in a khaki uniform climbed out of a police cruiser. While walking up to my car, he kicked a road-killed animal on the side of the road, a possum or a coon. Not just once but several times, like he was mad or something. That agitated me so much I couldn’t talk my way out of the ticket.

The irony seized me. I may have actually met this long-dead guy. Now I’m sitting here talking to his son, the result of a cosmic coincidence.

That’s all Remy could give me. I got back to Atlanta an hour before sunrise, itching to get more from the internet. Would an unsolved murder mystery and a haunted lake be enough? How do you connect it all to a Vietnam Vet who gets killed by his music teacher?

But connect it, I did. A simple internet search gave me plenty on Frank Robillard. It took the rest of the weekend to do it, but what I found hooked me worse than smoking crack.

Frank turned out to be an amazing whiz kid, who’d somehow avoided notoriety in the world outside Juliette. He was smart, athletic, and maybe even good looking. But after high school, news about Frank Robillard slowed to a trickle. He played football for UGA, dropped out to go to Vietnam. Then nothing. A decade passes with zilch except his obituary.

Does the trail run out? Not by a damn sight. A search on the town of Juliette revealed the most stunning mystery yet.

Lots of articles about Lake Juliette. Georgia Power engineers declared they were having lake level problems in an article about Plant Scherer, the only public mention of the whirlpool phenomenon I could find. They never actually used the word whirlpool.

But, ho-ho, just before the lake filled up an escaped convict from Ohio was captured between Juliette and Forsyth, one Theodore Vincent Swanson, but no mention of Frank. Had he died before the capture? The name Swanson sounded familiar. I vaguely remembered it from a piece I’d done on cop killers. So I searched the name, and the internet dropped a bomb on me.

Theodore Vincent Swanson currently sat on death-row in the Mansfield Ohio Correctional Institution. Every state including Ohio rewrote their death penalty laws when the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. Ohio was the only state that had never actually executed anyone in all those years. But they were about to stick the needle into Swanson.

TV Swanson proved to be a compelling lead. None of this information contained anything about Frank, except for the date of Swanson’s capture, May 25, 1980, which curiously coincided with the date the coroner gave for Frank's death. Mere coincidence? I’m sure Juliette did not have a huge number of policemen, so why no mention of Robillard if Swanson was captured there? TV Swanson had killed two cops in Ohio and fled to Georgia. Maybe Swanson knew something about it. I would need permission to interview him. The process was tricky, but a reporter has ways.

That’s pretty much all I had when I got involved with this story, one that never made it to the six o’clock news. It seemed so little considering the obsession was about to consume me, and no hint of the personal agony that was coming. The story of Frank Robillard and the commitment I made to his son, would haunt me more than any old swamp-gas ghost. It would strip me of my job and toss me into the human wasteland of depression. I did not know it then, but I was about to drown in all the secrets buried beneath Juliette more than if the old lady herself had dragged me into the cold, dark lake.

PART ONE – TV’s TALE

Chapter 2

From Brendan Macbean’s journal:

TV Swanson derived his nickname from his first and middle names, Theodore Vincent. Someone had connected his surname Swanson, with America's favorite brand of TV-dinner. TV made a career of stealing things and selling drugs, minor stuff compared to his last caper. He did several stints in jail including juvenile detention, the Ohio State Pen, and the Lima Hospital for the Criminally Insane. After his murder conviction, he was sent to death row in Mansfield, Ohio.

He began life in Pineville, West Virginia. His dad had been an automobile mechanic. Before TV reached school age, they moved to Akron, Ohio. His dad ran a filling station until he died of a heart attack in the early sixties. TV dropped out of school in his teens. His adult criminal career began with auto theft, for which he served time in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Several years later he was sent to the Lima Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a plea won for him by a public defender. Considering Lima’s reputation for prisoner mistreatment, this couldn’t have been much of a deal.

With his murder conviction, the prosecutor stated that TV Swanson committed this last crime with extreme malice, with a sane and rational mind. Interviewing this guy scared the crap out of me. Even under the prison guard’s protection, I expected him to spend the whole time trying to intimidate me, and I was already plenty intimidated.

At the Mansfield Corrections Facility, where Ohio housed their death row inmates, a string of bureaucrats reviewed my credentials before letting me in. The warden delivered a dreary homily about the news media’s liberal slant before handing me over to Mr. Bedoe, a no nonsense Yankee with an Ohio accent. He rattled off our agenda like an experienced tour guide.

We're gonna go down this hallway and take the elevator to the guard room. There you will go through a metal detector, just like the airport. He smiled showing yellow teeth. The rest of his lecture degenerated into a stream of blah - blahs until some vocal subtlety indicated he had finished.

The unavoidable odor of closely packed men assaulted my nose. Do you ever get used to the smell? Bedoe ignored my banter and shrugged again.

We arrived at corridor C, death row. Here prisoners awaited the executioner, and the penitentiary went all out to accommodate them. Death Row had its own interview room, infirmary, and kitchen. There was a small exercise plaza where the inmates could stretch their legs and get a little sun. The actual executions would take place at the Southern Ohio Corrections Facility, about fifty miles away.

As we walked down Death Row, a few of the condemned put their faces to the little meshed windows in their doors. Some made comments. Hey Bedoe! You bring us a new lawyer? Who gets the little guy? I had expected more rowdy behavior, but I didn’t get it. Whether they considered themselves guilty or innocent didn't matter. These were society’s bottom feeders; the unlucky and the stupid. Even in America death row was a tough place to get into. Eventually the state would get around to killing them, and this fact shadowed every second of their existence.

The visitor's room was well-lit and air-conditioned, with furniture consisting of two metal chairs and a table bolted to the floor. The room contained no other entrance or windows, and nothing obvious to separate me from the murderer. Otherwise the room was empty except for a large guard who seemed to be in a trance, not even nodding at our entrance.

Ernie’s here. Bedoe nodded to the living statue. I'll come back in an hour.

You're not going to stay for the interview? I tried to quash the panic in my voice.

Mr. Bedoe smiled without warmth. I got work to do. I seen this crap a thousand times.

His departure doubled my discomfort. Bedoe was a jerk, but he was my protector in this world of punishment. Could the stoic guard be counted on for anything? The moment stretched into minutes. Sweat seeped down my neck. My underwear cinched up. My eyes watered and my jaws cramped from unconscious clenching. I heard footsteps outside. Wait! It's too soon.

The door opened.

By the time Theodore Vincent, a.k.a. TV Swanson entered, my resolve had been erased by panic. I couldn’t think straight. He walked in as if he had arrived alone, but I knew there must be an escort. I peered around him to assure myself there was another guard, but he stood between me and the door. I forced three deep breaths.

At least he looked relaxed. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He was the ugliest, scariest looking guy I’d ever seen. His head was shaped like a top, wide near the hairline and narrow at the chin. The front half of his scalp was gleaming bald, the back had graying brown hair that hung down several inches. His chin pointed like a gnome's. His long nose hooked down over thin lips. Now in his mid-fifties, he had a paunch. He was average height, but still taller than me.

TV glanced at the guard and sat down like he knew the drill. He slouched a little in his chair and rested his left hand casually on the table top. His sleeves were rolled up and I expected to see his arms covered in tattoos. I was disappointed. He offered nothing but a predatory stare and a silence that stretched long enough to squeeze out even more sweat. I tried to endure his eye contact challenge, but when he noticed, he shifted abruptly on his chair.

You a reporter for television? He spat out the words like bullets.

I reeled as if struck. It took a moment to realize that he hadn't hit me.

Well, yes, a reporter.

Are you or not? His hand came up and I flinched. His efforts to intimidate made me angry and scared that I could even be angry.

I am a TV reporter, TV. May I call you that? Or do you prefer Ted? I hoped my voice sounded calm. My heart hammered like a runaway train.

You can put a story on television?

I leaned back, awkward with the chair bolted to the floor and folded my arms over my chest. You have a story?

He responded with the same predatory stare. You’re goddamn right, I got a story. They got the wrong man in here. They're gonna fry Mr. Bad. Just so's they can protect Mr. Big. He folded his arms matching my posture.

Mr. Big?

He looked sideways at the guard, Ernie. I ain't gonna spill it here, you dumbshit.

Well, why don’t we have lunch? His lips tightened at my weak humor. I don't think Ernie's even awake.

TV leaned forward and kept his voice low. With him moving his head in so close, I felt like I was sidling up to kiss a crocodile. These are power guys, he whispered. His breath was surprisingly fresh, like he’d recently brushed his teeth. "It'll